


Building Blocks

by anewspringwillcome



Category: Project Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Confessions, Family Dynamics, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 08:31:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15115664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anewspringwillcome/pseuds/anewspringwillcome
Summary: The word 'family' comes up that day. And really it might have always fit -- even if they weren't the best at admitting it.





	Building Blocks

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure you all must be shocked that I'm back with another team dynamic piece. It's my birthday, so I thought about birthday celebrations within OT parties. And this isn't the cute piece I originally had in mind, but it's what happened. It features worried Alfyn, which is something I kind of struggled with writing and don't entirely know how I feel about. For as easygoing as he is, the guy definitely worries about things -- obligations to people, mainly. I imagine him as having anxiety that keeps him up at night over those obligations. He wants everyone to be happy. Choosing the right words to depict that is difficult.
> 
> Anyways, have some cute family stuff for my birthday.

Alfyn swore if he had known about Tressa’s birthday soon enough to plan, they would have celebrated somewhere nice -- Atlasdam, where Cyrus could show them the capital’s fine cuisine, or the Highlands, with its gorgeous mountainous scenery, or even Rippletide, where Tressa could visit her parents and feel most at home. He knew it didn’t matter to _her_ ; after all, where did Tressa _not_ feel at home? But he would have liked to make it more spectacular than just camping in the Riverlands, where they found themselves the night before when Tressa had noticed the date on Cyrus’ weekly travel log and jumped up in realization to exclaim, “my birthday is tomorrow!” And they were too far from Clearbrook to make it there before nightfall the next day, so what little birthday celebration they could pull together had to be there.  
  
For Tressa’s part, she was perfectly content right where they were. Cyrus glanced up from the book he was reading to look downstream, where the girl was teaching Primrose how to skip stones across the water’s surface. On her face was the easygoing smile that she always seemed to wear -- only when she was intensely focused on something did it ever leave her features, and even then the corners of her mouth seemed to hint at lifting up in a manner that suggested a smile was never very far away.  
  
“Alfyn!” she called to the man, who stood knee-deep in the river, arms out in a stance suggesting he was ready to move at any moment. “Watch out!”  
  
And she skipped a flat stone narrowly past him. The thing broke the water's smooth finish as it went, leaving a group of frantic tadpoles floundering about in its wake. “You scared the fish away!” Alfyn called back, but he was grinning. “I almost had one!”  
  
Primrose smiled lightly, turning a stone over in her hands. “He’s said that five times now.”  
  
“He’ll get one,” Tressa said trustingly. She looked back at Primrose, the sun glinting in her hazel eyes as she smiled cheekily. “And if not, I’ll offer him my fishing rod.”  
  
Primrose looked fondly at the girl, who always smiled in a way so earnest that it almost made her heart ache. That morning, Alfyn had given her a similar look when he asked, “are y'sure you aren’t disappointed about spending your birthday here?" He looked around at the surrounding Riverlands with slight embarrassment. For as much as they were his home, he recognized their dullness. "Cyrus prob'ly wouldn't mind if we took a detour to celebrate somewhere fun this week.”  
  
But Tressa had already waved the idea off. “We haven’t had a lead on Cyrus’ book in ages! Besides, I’ve spent every birthday I’ve ever had in Rippletide! Anywhere is different, and I left for a reason, you know. I like it here.”  
  
It _was_ beautiful, Primrose thought. The sun was warm and seemed to live in the river, dancing across its surface in a jeweled display of color. It was more welcoming than the Sunlands, or even Sunshade. Brighter, more alive looking. Not covered in a thin layer of dust and sand. The sounds of rushing water encompassed the area, drowning out any other noises -- any other worries. Presently, Tressa threw another stone, watching it disrupt the light in the water as it skimmed across.  
  
“Finally!” Alfyn shouted from the river, and when they looked he was holding a sizable trout in the air triumphantly.  
  
“I'll go find kindling!" Tressa called, already taking off into the nearby brush to gather twigs.  
  
Primrose set the stone she had been holding down in the sand and started back upstream as she watched Alfyn wade through the water and onto the riverbank. From a distance, she hadn’t been able to see that his eyebrows were furrowed in a way that she only rarely saw -- when someone was injured in battle, or when he was tending to a wound, or when he was sleeping. And that last occasion was always the most worrying of all: concern was already so ill-suited to his face, and seeing his features take on the weight of some unspoken burden as he slept made her wonder what was troubling his heart. For it _had_ to go heart-deep; only greatly exhausting worries could follow a person into sleep.  
  
Her own face must have reflected her uneasiness, because as Cyrus peered at her nearing form over the top of his book, he said, “I noticed as well.”  
  
“What do you suppose troubles him?” Primrose asked under her breath.  
  
Before Cyrus could answer, though, Alfyn did it for him. “Y'know what she told me this morning?” He laid the trout on a large stone near the water to bleed out, having already stunned it upon capture. Primrose smiled in spite of herself; leave it to Alfyn to know all of the protocol, even if he wasn’t particularly gifted at the fish catching itself. He rolled his pant legs back down, looking thoroughly perplexed. “When we visited Rippletide a few months back, she had a fight with her parents about whether she should keep travelling with us.”  
  
Primrose felt her heart sink to her feet, but steeled herself for her reply. “Did she say why?”  
  
“Naw,” Alfyn said, laughing a little bit as he tugged at his collar -- a nervous tick of his that none of them ever liked to see. “Sounded like she hadn't ever thought to mention it.”  
  
“Tressa is capable of handling herself.” Cyrus smiled, ever rational. “She has always made her own decisions.”  
  
“I know-- _g_ _osh,_  I’d have to be blind to not know that.” Alfyn frowned thoughtfully, always so astounded by Tressa. “I'm just afraid she's burning bridges with them when they might be right.”  
  
Primrose understood now why Alfyn was so upset. Not much got to him like this, but family _always_ did. And Tressa was the only one out of the four of them who still had any living family. He cared that she maintained those relationships, even if Tressa herself didn’t realize their magnitude.  
  
"We're caple companions as any," Cyrus said equitably. "Tressa is better protected travelling with us than she would be on her own."  
  
"Is she?" Alfyn asked, his voice soft. Primrose hated how gloomy his face was -- it wasn't Alfyn at all. "All she's lookin' for is an adventure. We're the ones dragging her into dangerous things."  
  
"Me, you mean," Primrose said quietly.  
  
Alfyn's eyes drew further together in worry as he realized the implications of what he had said. "Gee, Prim, I didn't say that..."  
  
"It's what you meant." Primrose shrugged, her eyes falling stony in the way she had grown accustomed to after many years of needing to shield her emotions through difficult things. Many of those things had been far more difficult, and still this one almost felt the hardest; perhaps because she was just getting used to the luxury of adopting a happier outlook, sharing parts of herself with these people because she _wanted_ to. "You are correct. My pursuits have led us into more peril than any of you deserve. I do not blame you or Tressa's parents for your doubt." She laughed a bitter little laugh, gazing out at the water to avoid both men's eyes. How easy it was to step back behind that aloof facade. "Look at me. They must think their daughter is going to die following around a whorish-"  
  
"Prim, stop it," Alfyn said softly, looking at her with those eyes of his -- those kind, pleading things which begged for her to see within herself the value _he_ saw -- as he reached out instinctively to rest a hand on her arm before stopping himself, always recognizing her apprehensions towards touch and subconscious inclinations towards flinching away from it. "Don't say those things about yourself. I said all of us, and I meant it. Just last week she was bit by a venomous spider trying to help me find that herb for frostbite."

But these were not worries Primrose was being confronted with for the first time. She had feared for Tressa's fate since the day they began travelling together -- a choice she hadn't made easily. She hadn't wanted to bring _anyone_ into her own dangerous mess, and still somehow she had joined up with these three wonderful people whose lives she might someday see lost.

"I have been the cause of your injuries far more times," Primrose said. "To have brought each of you into my pursuits is something I was selfish to do. I realize my situation is dangerous--"  
  
"The two of you calm down," Cyrus interrupted, shutting his book finally. "I see no reason to worry ourselves over this. Why not ask Tressa for _her_ explanation?"  
  
The man nodded over their shoulders, where Tressa had reappeared at the edge of the brush carrying a pile of twigs. “Alfyn, there’re some wildflowers I want you to identify for me after dinner!” she said as she joined them, but her smile faltered slightly when she saw their expressions. “Geez, why the long faces?”  
  
Alfyn immediately recovered, his face taken over by the pleasant expression he normally wore. “No long faces here.”  
  
Tressa snorted. “Alf, you know your eyes always give you away. You can see every emotion you’re feeling in those things. Really, what's the matter?"  
  
When Alfyn and Primrose said nothing, Cyrus smiled, looking very much like a parent trying to contain his amusement at his children's melodrama. "These two seem to be concerned about an occurrence in Rippletide when we visited your parents three months ago."  
  
Tressa's freckled nose crinkled in vague confusion. "You mean what I said this morning?" she asked Alfyn. "Why would you be worried about that?"  
  
Alfyn swallowed hard. "We just don't want travelling with us to lead you into danger. I know I would never forgive myself-- if somethin' were to…" And he trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought.  
  
"Danger is half the fun!" Tressa said, her eyes bright. "Really, I would think you three should know I'm not as fragile as I look by this point."  
  
And they _did_ know. Alfyn had known before he even saw her in battle, from the assured way she introduced herself to him many months ago back in Clearbrook. But it wasn't what he meant, because for as much as they all realized her strength, they also realized that many people stronger than her -- stronger than _any_ of them -- had already fallen. The subject of their own mortality was one they tried to avoid, but the grounded worries of Tressa's parents, wary to the dangers of the realm, had placed that fear they constantly tried to ignore at the forefront of their minds.  
  
Tressa seemed to realize this. "They didn’t want me to go when I first left, either. Pa is protective. But he also knows there’s no changing my mind once I’ve set my heart on something. He had to accept that.”

“And did he?” Alfyn asked, his voice earnest with his obvious care for the girl. “If it’s why you didn’t want to go home for your birthday--”  
  
“Gosh, no,” Tressa said. “Pa resigned himself to me always doing what I think is right ages ago. And I don’t need to be in Rippletide for my birthday. It’s where my parents and a lot of good memories are, but where I want to be is out here. That’s why I left in the first place.” She smiled contentedly at her three companions. “Besides, the three of you are my family too. So I _am_ spending my birthday with family."  
  
There was a moment of silence in which they absorbed the weight of what she had said. For whatever reasons, they were travelling together -- had been for months now, and a label had never been put on it. The latent idea that they cared for one another had always remained unsaid -- a shared notion that none dared put into words. Because then it was _permanent_ \-- and Primrose struggled with the fear of permanent things not truly being permanent, and Cyrus was out of his depth with topics not covered in the countless academic tomes he read, and Alfyn knew these things about both of them and so tried to make them realize his feelings through the way he acted rather than through words. Leave it to Tressa to do what they all had been avoiding, her words assured by the ease that only came from honesty. Suggesting that it wasn't a big deal. But it _was_ big.  
  
"Now let's cook this thing already!" she said, starting over towards the trout to prepare it. "Really, that was far too bleak for a birthday."  
  
Alfyn and Primrose exchanged a glance, and the last remnants of fear that remained in the pit of her stomach seemed to fade away when she saw in his face the solace that everything would be okay. She hadn’t realized how comforting the warmth in his eyes was to her before. Seeing that warmth accompanied by honest concern today made her mind jump to a million places, each a different meaning to the weight his face held while he slept. She had never asked before -- _anything_ about _any_ of her companions, past superficial questions. Because they had been abundantly willing to never question _her_ past, the reasons _her_ face must have its own weight in sleep. Now she looked at them, watching as Tressa taught Cyrus about preparing a fish while the man listened with great interest.

“You coming?” Alfyn asked, looking back over his shoulder at her with that familiar Alfyn smile.

And as the four gathered on the riverbank to officially celebrate Tressa’s birthday, it felt different than ever before. There was a hopefulness now. A desire to accomplish each of their goals that they had always carried with them -- but this time the fear of the dangers they had faced and would continue to face felt lessened. Because maybe they were doing something bigger here. Building a weird little family. Maybe they had always been on the verge of that.

And now Tressa had made the leap. So maybe they all could.


End file.
